Quiet Talks on Prayer eBook

And so out of the experience came a double blessing.
There was a much fuller working of God’s plan
for His poor befooled world. And there was an
unspeakable nearness of intimacy with his Lord for
Paul. The man was answered and the petition denied
that the larger plan of service might be carried out.

Shaping a Prayer on the Anvil of the Knees.

The last of these pictures is like Raphael’s
Sistine Madonna in the Dresden gallery; it is in a
room by itself. One enters with a holy hush over
his spirit, and, with awe in his eyes, looks at Jesus
in Gethsemane. There is the Kidron brook,
the gentle rise of ground, the grove of gnarled knotty
old olive trees. The moon above is at the full.
Its brightness makes these shadowed recesses the darker;
blackly dark. Here is a group of men lying on
the ground apparently asleep. Over yonder deeper
in among the trees a smaller group reclines motionless.
They, too, sleep. And, look, farther in yet is
that lone figure; all alone; nevermore alone; save
once—­on the morrow.

There is a foreshadowing of this Gethsemane experience
in the requested interview of the Greeks just a few
intense days before. In the vision which the
Greeks unconsciously brought the agony of the olive
grove began. The climax is among these moon-shadowed
trees. How sympathetic those inky black shadows!
It takes bright light to make black shadows. Yet
they were not black enough. Intense men can get
so absorbed in the shadows as to forget the light.

This great Jesus! Son of God: God the Son.
The Son of Man: God—­a man! No
draughtsman’s pencil ever drew the line between
His divinity and humanity; nor ever shall. For
the union of divine and human is itself divine, and
therefore clear beyond human ken. Here His humanity
stands out, pathetically, luminously stands out.
Let us speak of it very softly and think with the
touch of awe deepening for this is holiest ground.
The battle of the morrow is being fought out here.
Calvary is in Gethsemane. The victory of the
hill is won in the grove.

It is sheer impossible for man with sin grained into
his fibre through centuries to understand the horror
with which a sinless one thinks of actual contact
with sin. As Jesus enters the grove that night
it comes in upon His spirit with terrific intensity
that He is actually coming into contact—­with
a meaning quite beyond us—­coming into contact
with sin. In some way all too deep for definition
He is to be “made sin."[23] The language used
to describe His emotions is so strong that no adequate
English words seem available for its full expression.
An indescribable horror, a chill of terror, a frenzy
of fright seizes Him. The poisonous miasma of
sin seems to be filling His nostrils and to be stifling
Him. And yonder alone among the trees the agony
is upon Him. The extreme grips Him. May
there not yet possibly be some other way rather than
this—­this! A bit of that prayer